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Trial Hears New Evidence on Lockerbie Suspects
The Special Scottish court in the Netherlands for the Lockerbie bombing case heard Tuesday from witnesses that two Libyans accused of the attack flew to Malta just the day before the blast of Pan Am flight 103 on December 21,1988.
Prosecutors at the court say the Libyan men in Malta loaded a bomb to be transferred onto the doomed flight. During Tuesday's testimony, prosecutor Alan Turnbull showed four Scottish judges
presiding over the special court immigration cards for flights from Tripoli to Malta dated December 20, 1988, in the names of Lamen Khalifa Fimah and Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad.
The indictment against Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima and Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who are charged with planting the bomb that blasted the Pan Am flight over Scottish town Lockerbie, says Megrahi was using a false passport in the name of Abdusamad.
The other immigration card showed a man traveling as Abdusamad returned to Tripoli on December 21, 1988, when all 259 passengers on board the Pan Am flight 103 and 11 Lockerbie residents were
killed.
The prosecution says the two defendants adopted the cover of Libyan Arab Airlines employees at Luqa airport in Malta to hide a bomb inside a Toshiba radio cassette recorder in a suitcase with
stolen Air Malta tags on a flight to Frankfurt, to be transferred there onto the target flight.
Located in Camp Zeist, about 50 kilometers from Amsterdam, the court also heard from two Toshiba employees, who said their firm had delivered 20,000 Bombeat RT-SF 16 units to Libya in October 1988.
Forensic experts told the trial last month they had gathered shards of such a model to show what type of bomb was used. Former Toshiba manager Yoshihiro Miura said Tuesday that almost 80
percent of those models were delivered to Libya.
The trial was adjourned early the day until Wednesday morning to give the defence time to digest five new files related to Frankfurt airport, the next stage of evidence. The files came from U.S. civil cases related to the Lockerbie affair.
The Lockerbie trial started May 3 this year and is expected to last over one year.
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